Software applications may facilitate collaboration and communication between employees, customers, suppliers, etc. For example, these applications may provide electronic mail exchange, calendaring functions, contact management, and meeting creation. Such software applications include activity management applications of Enterprise Resource Planning systems (e.g., SAP ERP®) and groupware applications (e.g., Microsoft Outlook®, Lotus Notes®).
Using one of the above software applications, a user may open a new meeting and associate the meeting with a subject, one or more attendees, a date and time, and a meeting venue. Other meeting particulars may be specified as well, including but not limited to an attachment, invitation text, and dial-in information. The meeting is then sent (e.g., in object form) to the one or more attendees, who each may accept or deny the meeting. If accepted by an attendee, the meeting and its associated particulars may be added to the attendee's electronic calendar.
During the actual meeting, attendees may determine that a follow-up meeting is needed. The final minutes of the meeting are therefore consumed with creating the follow-up meeting in view of the attendees' respective schedules.
To create the follow-up meeting, the meeting organizer may open a new meeting and associate each of the desired attendees with the new meeting. Association of the desired attendees may allow the meeting organizer to view the attendees' schedules. Accordingly, the meeting organizer specifies a future date and time for the meeting based on the attendees' schedules. Also specified may be a subject and body text indicating the meeting on which the new meeting is based, attachments, and a venue.
Unbeknownst to typical users, a follow-up meeting may also be created by copying and pasting the current meeting to an arbitrary date and time. Such action creates a duplicate of the original meeting including all the meeting particulars of the original meeting (e.g., subject, body text, venue, attendees), albeit scheduled at the arbitrary date and time. The meeting organizer may view the attendees' schedules to specify an appropriate date and time for the meeting, and may further modify the copied meeting particulars to indicate that the new meeting is based on a previous meeting.
Creation of a follow-up meeting therefore requires the meeting organizer to perform the same, if not more, steps as were performed to create an original meeting on which the follow-up meeting is based. This requirement creates inefficiencies any time a follow-up meeting is created, and may be particularly troublesome if the follow-up meeting is to be created during a time period allotted to the original meeting. Improved creation of follow-up meetings is therefore desired.